


Asgard Trip

by EthanTheAnnus



Series: The Mechanisms Stuff [3]
Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Crossover, Gen, Honestly this is just a big slice of headcanons take it or leave it, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Murder, The Void, headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24073114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthanTheAnnus/pseuds/EthanTheAnnus
Summary: “Linked statements of Skarde, Erik, Sten and Randi, regarding their trip from Old Midgard to Asgard. Original statement given May 3rd, 1977. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statements begin.”-OR-Four detectives travel to Asgard to investigate a murder, forty years before what is known as the Bifrost Incident.
Relationships: Skarde/Erik
Series: The Mechanisms Stuff [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1412332
Kudos: 3





	Asgard Trip

The Institute was dimly lit, and amongst the shelves and shelves of statements nestled a small desk. Hunched over it was a figure, with messy brown hair and tired, pale aqua eyes. His normally neat suit was slightly crumpled from his position, and two items of clothing lay discarded beside him; a fedora, and a golden necktie. 

His mouth twitched as his gaze flicked over the paper before him, face contorting with subtle expressions. Eventually, he threw the paper down, and let out a sigh. With a look of resignation, he pulled the old tape recorder across from the far corner of the desk and clicked it on.

“Linked statements of Skarde, Erik, Sten and Randi, regarding their trip from Old Midgard to Asgard. Original statement given May 3rd, 1977. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statements begin.”

  
  


**STATEMENT ONE: RANDI**

_ There was one time I travelled to Asgard. One time, that made me determined to never return.  _

_ We were sent to investigate the murder of a Midgardian, by the name of Revna. All signs pointed to her killer being from Asgard. As everyone knows, their weaponry is advanced far beyond ours, and only an Asgardian could have left golden blood at the scene of the crime. _

_ Our party was small, only consisting of the four of us; Skarde, Erik and Sten were my companions. As it was a three-month-long trip to Asgard, we knew that whatever wounds the killer had sustained on Midgard would clearly have healed.  _

_ It had taken a month for us to be assigned this trip, which meant the Asgardian was already a third of the way back to Asgard before we even began our journey. The three months of travelling aren’t really worth noting; we went through suspects, both in Downtown and Uptown Asgard, and managed to shorten our list considerably before our arrival, but there was still a large number of citizens to question. _

_ Upon our arrival, it was shocking to imagine a killer could come from such a place. The place where our ship had been tied up was right on the border of Uptown and Downtown Asgard, and the definition was clear. Downtown was shiny, bright silver, every building perfect and carefully built. Uptown was shinier and brighter, a gold so bright it was blinding, ornate carvings etched into every surface, crafted carefully and with an expert hand. _

_ It was beautiful and perfect. Harmony seemed to sing from every inch of it, and it seemed like a perfect city. As we travelled in deeper, however, we began to notice the lack of citizens roaming the streets.  _

_ We headed towards the heart of Downtown Asgard first; there were far more citizens we needed to question who lived here than Uptown, and as we continued inwards, it became more and more apparent how deserted the city was. _

_ It was concerning, to say the least, but we didn't let this deter us. After all, we had citizens to question and a murder to solve. Plus, Skarde is a large guy. I didn’t think anyone would try anything with his hulking form walking beside us. _

_ Our first address was close to the centre of Downtown. On our way, we passed through a market. It was here that I really began to realise Asgard was not what it seemed. The stallholder’s gazes flicked around the street nervously and followed Skarde as he walked by. More than once I spotted one of them gripping what looked like a gun under their table of wares, knuckles white. _

_ Asgard was clearly not a friendly place. Nothing worth noting happened for the next few days; we turned over some stones, spoke to some very nervous citizens, and found nothing. Erik grew more confident with the layout of the city as the days passed, which was helpful for navigation, while Sten grew more and more skittish. _

_ Sten would often mention how he got a bad feeling in certain parts of Downtown, or how much he wished we were back on Midgard. At the time, I’d dismissed it. Sten had always been the more nervous one of the group, jumping at his own shadow whenever we patrolled. Now I wish I’d listened to him. _

_ It was a week into our investigation Downtown when we ran into the first of many of the infamous Downtown Riots. It was a bloody brawl, and right before our eyes, two citizens died. Skarde managed to break the Riot up before more people could die, but it was enough to shake us all, especially Sten. _

_ During the month we spent Downtown, we encountered about twenty Riots. Skarde only managed to break up five of them in total, and only one ended with no casualties or fatalities. Skarde got injured badly trying to break up the sixteenth or seventeenth Riot we encountered, hence the metal arm he has today. _

_ We were all glad once we finished with our Downtown portion of the list and could move Uptown. It seemed the citizens felt the same, as I noticed them watching eagerly as we, especially Skarde, left.  _

_ Uptown was also quiet, just like Downtown, but here the people seemed friendlier. A doctor was quick to usher us inside to patch Skarde’s wounds and to manufacture him a metal arm; something about Skarde’s long brown hair and blue eyes being a sign of high status, I think.  _

_ Erik tried to strike up a conversation with the doctor about the city’s layout but was almost completely ignored. I guess the doctor was less than impressed with Erik’s messy black hair and amber eyes, or just didn’t like small talk. _

_ When we left, Sten quietly mentioned that he had not liked the doctor at all. Again, I dismissed this, and we continued towards the city centre. _

_ Uptown had a similar layout to Downtown, and I should probably mention how similar every single house on Asgard is. The shiny exterior of the home, the inside dark and dim. Every house has weaponry littered everywhere, so there’s always something within close reach, and those with some money have a big, burly guard just inside their door. _

_ Everyone on Asgard sports some kind of scarring, too, but most notable is that of the Allmother, Odin. She wears an eyepatch to cover it, and I don’t blame her; the scarring underneath is pretty horrific. We only spoke to her once, the day we entered Uptown. _

_ I did most of the talking, showing her our list of suspects and explaining that we were here to question them about the murder of Revna. Odin was quick to knock some suspects from our list; her son Thor, who she claimed would never do such a thing, and Loki, who she said had been executed a week ago for treason and murder. _

_ We left to continue through Uptown, and through our list. Thor had been at the top of our suspects’ list, as had Loki, but Thor was confirmed to have been on Asgard for the past year, and Loki, well… She was dead, and that was that. _

_ We ended up locating the murderer, one of the lower class Uptown residents. A Riot broke out when we arrested her, and later, when Skarde and I tried to report it to the Asgardian Uptown Police, it was dismissed as a complete lie.  _

_ We returned to earth by ship, bringing the guilty party back to be judged fairly. On the trip back was when I noticed something seemed off about Erik. He didn’t injure any of us or seem dangerous, but I did see him eat a mug at one point. _

_ Whatever had happened to him in the final days of our Asgardian trip had clearly changed him- or he simply wasn’t Erik anymore. Whatever it was, it made me certain I never wanted to go back to that hellish paradise. _

**STATEMENT TWO: SKARDE**

_ Asgard was nothing like I imagined it to be. Upon arrival, it was far shinier and sleeker and more modern than I could ever have imagined. Randi, Erik and Sten didn’t seem nearly as impressed by the architecture as I was, though. _

_ We first went to Downtown, hoping to get the majority of suspects off our list before tackling Updown. Uptown is the higher classes, and in all honesty, we were hoping our murderer would be from Downtown. _

_ I should probably give some context. Randi, Erik, Sten and I had been sent up to Asgard to investigate the murder of a Midgardian, Revna. It had been narrowed down to the entire population of Asgard, due to golden blood found at the crime scene. It was then narrowed further by testing the blood, but the problem with Asgardians is that all their blood is very, very similar. _

_ And so here we were; four Midgardian detectives, up on the home planet of the gods themselves. The architecture and structural integrity of the place was amazing. If you couldn’t tell, I’d have loved to have been an architect. Police work suited me, and I enjoyed my job for the most part, so I wasn’t about to quit. _

_ Downtown was quiet and unsettling. A couple of times I spotted citizens, but they always hid away the moment they spotted me, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I was scaring them so much. I was tall and muscular, even by Asgardian standards, but no one on Midgard treated me like… Well, like I was a beast. _

_ I subconsciously gripped the gun at my hip. That, too, was unsettling. Usually, as a detective, you’d carry a net gun and a taser, and maybe sometimes a tranq gun. For our Asgard trip, we’d all been heavily armed. I didn’t understand why back then; I do now. _

_ Sten kept close to Randi and me, and I could tell he was spooked. Everything about this planet was strange and seemed out of place. Walking through the markets, I could see the fear in the eyes of citizens as I passed. The only ones who didn’t seem to be in fear of me were the few of similar build and height, but they were heavily scarred, and openly carried large, deadly weapons. Something about the permanent snarls on their faces told me not to cross them. _

_ Randi seemed distant after the marketplace and I was sure she’d seen things I hadn’t. Sten just seemed skittish, as usual, and it reminded me how much younger he was than the rest of us. While Randi, Erik and I are in our late twenties, Sten is barely nineteen.  _

_ That night I barely slept. Erik fell asleep right away, however, confirming in my mind that I’m dating a psychopath. He and I had been together about a year at this point, having met through work, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him truly rattled by anything. _

_ I asked him, when we were on Asgard, if how quiet everything was Downtown bothered him. Erik didn’t really respond properly, but he was often distracted. He was good at his job, though, and he cared more than he let on. _

_ A week in we encountered the first of many of the infamous Downtown Riots. I managed to break it up, and at the time, it was pretty startling. I hardly got injured, but watching the Riot itself break out… Two people died, despite my efforts, and I remember having to comfort Sten. _

_ “I don’t like here,” he’d said to me, after Erik and Randi had fallen asleep. “Nothing feels natural, or normal.” _

_ I’d agreed with him, at that moment, and in the month that followed, everything that occurred just confirmed we were right. In the next month, I attempted to break up more fights than I’d seen in my entire career on the police force. Only five times did it work. _

_ Sten was shaken up anytime these Riots broke out, and every day he seemed to be cracking more and more. Only one Riot I managed to stop before anyone died, or was even injured. I lost my arm breaking up one of the Riots. _

_ Downtown was terrible, in all honesty. Someone tried to cut off Randi’s hair, since orange hair is apparently valuable here. Another was after her skin, because it was dark in pigment. Another citizen wanted Erik’s eyes, and someone wanted Sten’s bones (something about thin, brown haired boys having good, strong bones). _

_ Heading Uptown was a relief, and not only because a doctor saw to my wounds. Odin was unsettling, to say the least, and how quickly she dismissed many of our suspects was certainly fishy, but she’s the Allmother, so there was nothing I could say. _

_ Turns out Revna’s killer was some lower-class Uptown citizen. Or that’s what they say, anyway. I can’t shake the feeling that someone threw them under the bus to get themselves out of a bind. What’s more, the night before we left Asgard, Erik off-handedly mentioned “seeing something strange”.  _

_ On the trip back to Midgard, Erik seemed different. I don’t know what was up with him. He also doesn’t seem to remember anything about Asgard, or how off it was up there. Something happened to him, but I don’t know what. _

**STATEMENT THREE: STEN**

_ I never liked Erik, right from the start. Just getting that out there. I won’t lie to you; he scared me, and it was part of why I stuck close to Skarde and Randi. I wouldn’t have wished this on anyone, though, not even him. _

_ I remember Revna’s death; or, rather, I remember when they found out she was dead, and I remember the crime scene. The way her body was battered and broken and stretched out of shape. The golden blood smeared across her forehead. I remember Erik made a bad Lion King joke when seeing the photos in the case file. _

_ He hadn’t been there, though. Hadn’t seen, in real, horrifying detail, how her face was twisted in pain, how elongated her limbs were, and how her body cracked and bent like sandpaper under the coroner’s careful touch. _

_ That image stuck with me, all the way to Asgard. The moment we got off the ship and stepped onto the planet, I was hit with the overwhelming need to leave. Everything felt off, and wrong. The others seemed fine, though. _

_ We went Downtown, and the closer to the centre we travelled, the worse I felt about it all. The streets were empty, and the people we did see fled in fear. Those holding stalls at the markets gripped weapons under the table, and the larger, burlier citizens walked by with heavy scarring.  _

_ Something about Asgard was very, very wrong. I think Skarde noticed it a little at first too, and a week in, after the first of many Riots we encountered, he approached me about it. I remember telling him that I didn’t like it on Asgard. He’d agreed with me, said he felt uneasy. _

_ I remember saying this one particular line to him, though, and at the time, I didn’t truly know what I was saying. I wish I did, because maybe then we’d have gotten off of that planet sooner than we did. _

_ “The Void is singing. I can hear it, Skarde.” _

_ The moment I’d said that, it was like a low humming had suddenly filled the air. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t go away. The Void, it seems, had been summoned.  _

_ We spent a while Downtown; a year, or a week, I couldn’t tell you, but in our time there, I saw more fights than I wished to. Skarde was always quick to dive in to break them apart; and quick to come crawling back to us, injured. He lost his arm breaking up one Riot, and very nearly lost his eyes to another. _

_ When we finally travelled Uptown, the low humming in my ears rose, one notch of volume at a time for each mile closer to the heart of the Uptown of Asgard. Odin freaked me out, to say the least, and I spent the conversation cowering behind Skarde and Randi. I could practically hear Erik mocking me, though he never said a single word. _

_ Nothing too odd happened Uptown; not by day, anyway. I could barely sleep, for the humming in my ears, and too many times I found myself at the windows of our overnight dwelling, watching silently as yet another brawl broke out in the streets. _

_ It seemed that Downtown’s Riots weren’t nearly as bad or as regular as those of Uptown. Maybe the higher status of those living Uptown made some difference on their reputation. I don’t know. _

_ We found the killer pretty quickly. The night right before we left to return to Midgard with the murderer was when everything went to shit. I found myself awake again, but this time, Erik was too. _

_ Something was off about him. He didn’t have his usual mocking air about him, and his eyes looked vacant. In hindsight, I should have forced him back to sleep. I didn’t. _

_ “Sten. It’s calling.” _

_ The words were spoken in a voice so clearly not Erik’s, that I felt chills down my spine. He’d repeated that sentence, about three times, before he began to walk towards the house exit. _

_ I followed him, not exactly trying to stop him from leaving. I was too spooked for that. _

_ “Erik?” I remember asking. He had turned then, and his eyes were completely black, no iris or even the white of his eye showing.  _

_ “I have to go to it.” _

_ I watched as he exited the building. I just stood, frozen. I don’t remember when I went to bed, but I do remember the morning. _

_ As we left Asgard, I couldn’t help but notice the man with us wasn’t Erik. Randi and Skarde didn’t seem to notice, though. Didn’t spot that Erik now had blue eyes, instead of his usual amber.  _

_ I don’t know what happened to Erik that night. All I know is that it wasn’t Erik that came back with us to Midgard. _

**STATEMENT FOUR: ERIK**

_ The Asgard trip? What is there to say? It was fairly normal. Randi, Skarde and Sten were my companions.  _

_ We did our usual detective work, and when all trails turned cold in Downtown, we headed Uptown. There, we found Revna’s killer, and arrested them, then returned to Midgard. _

_ The only notably odd thing was Odin quickly dismissing many of our suspects. Or the metal arm my boyfriend somehow got.  _

  
  


“Statements end.” The hunched over figure of Jonathan Sims sat himself up a little taller. He fixed his suit jacket slightly before continuing.

“Three of the four statements line up almost perfectly, except for Erik’s. This was before the tragedy that befell Old Midgard, known as the Bifrost Incident, and these statements, and the mention of the Void, line up with some statements we received from those who managed to escape Old Midgard, including Lyfrassir Edda.”

Jon paused, eyes flicking over the statements on the desk before him.

“There wasn’t much to look into here. Randi, Skarde, Sten and Erik are long dead by now, as are the citizens of Uptown Asgard, the unfortunate passengers of the Ratatosk Express. Tim looked into any information we had on the four detectives whose statements we have here. None of them, except for Sten, survived what we know as the Bifrost Incident. They also did indeed all fit the descriptions given, apart from Erik, who was reported to be orange haired.”

Jon leaned back in his chair.

“Erik’s statement also seems dismissive of the claims of the other three statements. This means either Randi, Skarde and Sten are lying, or the Void did something to Erik’s mind.”

Jon leaned forward, pressing a button on the tape recording, stopping the recording. He carefully labelled the tape, then collected it and the statements together, and meticulously placed them among a measly amount of other files, also with their own tapes. 

Then, he picked up his neck tie and stuffed it haphazardly into his pocket. With a sigh, he grabbed his fedora, placed it on his head, and made for the door, making sure to switch off the lights before he left, closing the Institute for the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Skarde, Randi, Sten and Erik are my new tma/tbi ocs, say hello to them!!! I love them all very much and honestly, they deserve better than they got.


End file.
